BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Russian Culture If you asked about Colonita...

If the person who sent me an email asking about the Moldavian village Colonita is from this forum, I just want to tell you to check your email. I have already sent you an answer. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Eric, we all want to know!

I received an email last night from a woman I had never met before, asking simply for information about the village "Kolonica", where her grandfather was born.

Since the question came to me, I automatically assumed it would be somewhere in the former USSR, since this is where my specialty is. I don't even visit forums or anywhere else that deals with other countries!

Anyway, after a lot of searching, and the help of a friend from Vladivostok, we finally found the one and only village with a similar name in the CIS countries - Colonita (&#1050;&#1086;&#1083;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;&#1094;&#1072;), right outside of Kishinyov.

After writing some more with this woman, though, it became clear that she was not talking about a Moldavian village. She kept mentioning Greeks and other places. So, it seems that probably she is thinking of a village in far southern former Yugoslavia, or far northern Greece, right on the border. Maybe Macedonia, I don't know... But with the information she is telling me, it's nowhere in the former USSR. So, I'm not really able to help her anymore.

She is making this more confusing now. She is mentioning something about a "Greek Catholic Byzantine Church" (makes no sense to me!) in Bratislava!!

I wish I could help her, but she's covering a pretty wide area of Europe right now, and it's too difficult to focus on something unless she can be more specific in her information. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I am not surprised by the term since I'm familiar with the Greek Catholic Church of Western Ukraine and its rather recent problems.

As to Bratislava, there exists indeed the Byzantine Catholic Parish of Bratislava, Church of the Exaltation of the Venerable Cross.

Maybe this can help:

"At the time of the early Church, there were several rich cultures in the Middle East and each of them has given rise to a different church tradition. The traditions of this church reflect the Greek or Byzantine culture, and so we are called Greek Catholics or Byzantine Catholics (from Byzantium, the ancient name for Constantinople).

Greek Catholics in the Middle East were also nicknamed 'Melkite' because they followed the faith of the Byzantine emperor, or melek. In addition, many Greek Catholic Churches are identified by their national origin, such as Hungarian, Romanian or Ukrainian. "

http://www.byzantines.net

Don't we just love confusion? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Anyway, looking back on the old emails, it's pretty funny how I was talking about Moldavia, and she was covering pretty much all of Central Europe. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />